victim was a certain Sergeant Davis, who had charge of one of the military parties or guards dispersed over the Highlands to keep them in order after the '45. Davis had gone from his own post at Braemar up Glen Clunie to meet the guard from Glenshee. He chose to send his men back and take a day's shooting among the wild mountains at the head of the glen, and was seen no more. How he was disposed of could easily be divined in a general way, but there were no particulars to be had. It happened, however, that there was one Highlander who, for reasons best known to himself-they were never got at -had come to the resolution of bringing his brother Highlanders, who had made away with the sergeant, to justice. It was necessary for his own safety, however, that he should be under the pressure of a motive or impulse sufficient to justify so heartless and unnatural a proceeding, otherwise he would himself have been likely to follow the sergeant's fate. Any reference to his conscience, the love of justice, respect for the laws of the land, or the like, would of course have been received with well-merited ridicule and scorn. He must have some motive which a sensible Highlander could admit as probable in itself, and sufficient for its purpose.

Accordingly, the accuser said he had been visited by the sergeant's ghost, who had told him everything, and laid on him the heavy burden of bringing his slaughterers in the flesh to their account. If that were not done, the troubled spirit would not cease to walk the earth, and so long as he walked would the afflicted denouncer continue to be the victim of his ghostly visits. The case was tried at Edinburgh, and though the evidence was otherwise clear and complete, the Lowland jury were perplexed and put out by the supernatural episode. A Highland story, with a ghost acting witness at second hand, roused all their Saxon prejudices, and they cut the knot of difficulties by de

clining to convict. A point was supposed to have been made, when the counsel for the defence asked the ghost-seer what language the ghost, who was English when in the flesh, spoke to the Highlander, who knew not that language; and the witness answered, through his interpreter, that the spectre spoke as good Gaelic as ever was heard in Lochaber. Sir Walter Scott, however, remarks that there was no incongruity in this, if we once get over the first step of the ghost's existence. It is curious that Scott does not seem to have woven the particulars of this affair into any one of his novels.

The editorial services of Scott, like everything about so great a man, are pretty well known; but one little book which he thus preserved has escaped general notice, though it is stamped as his by the advertisement, dated "Abbotsford, 1st April 1814." It was not edited for one of the clubs, being before their day; but it was of the kind affected by them, and was printed for private distribution in facsimile with its old title:"The Letting of Humors Blood in the Head-Vaine. With a New Morrisco, danced by Seven Satyres upon the Bottome of Diogenes' Tubbe. Imprinted at London by W. W., 1611." The author's name was Samuel Rowland, and his book, a collection of rhyming satires, is both valuable and curious, as containing powerful pictures of the humorists of the seventeenth century-that is to say, not of men who either wrote humorous literature, or did what we would now call humorous acts, but who adopted some perverse and generally mischievous and vicious peculiarity, which each resolved to carry out at all hazards as being his "humour." It was in this sense that Shylock silenced all arguments against cutting out the pound of flesh, by the "say, it is my humour." Scott, than whom no man could speak with more authority, says of Rowland :-"Our poet has given

us numerous instances both of the real and of the pseudo-humorist; and as he described the scenes in which he lived, and the follies which were acted before his eyes, it is interesting to observe that the various affectations of the retainers of Sir John Falstaff, as well as those of the Bobadil, Stephen, and Master Mathew of Jonson, and of the various comic characters portrayed by Beaumont and Fletcher, were not, as modern readers might conceive them, the fantastic creatures of the poet's imagination, but had in reality their prototypes upon the great scene of the world. The author has indeed portrayed examples of every species of affectation, from the bombastic vein of Ancient Pistol to the melancholy and gentlemanlike gravity of Master Stephen."

Anything new, however trivial it might be, from the pen of the Author of Waverley, would meet with a hearty reception at all hands. In the belief that it is virtually new, as not having been seen by perhaps above fifty people, we quote again from the introduction to Rowland's little book :-"It has been remarked that his muse is seldom found in the best company; and to have been so well acquainted with the bullies, drunkards, gamesters, and cheats whom he describes, he must have frequented the haunts of dissipation in which such characters are to be found. But the humorous descriptions of low life exhibited in his satires are more precious to antiquarians than more grave works, and those who make the manners of Shakespeare's age the subject of their study, may better spare a better author than Samuel Rowland."

Among those who contributed to place the stamp of a higher character on the labours of the book clubs, one of the most remarkable was Sir Alexander Boswell.

He

was a member of the Roxburghe, and though he did not live to see the improvement in the issues of that institution, or the others which

kept pace with it, he alone, and single-handed, set the example of printing the kind of books which it was afterwards the merit of the book clubs to promulgate. He gave them, in fact, their tone. He had at his paternal home of Auchinleck a remarkable collection of rare books and manuscripts; one of these afforded the text from which the romance of Sir Tristrem was printed. He reprinted from the one remaining copy in his own possession the disputation between John Knox and Quentin Kennedy, a priest who came forward against the great Reformer as the champion of the old religion. From the Auchinleck press came also reprints of Lodge's Fig for Momus, Churchyard's Mirrour of Man, The Book of the Chess, Sir James Dier's Remembrancer of the Life of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Dialogus inter Deum et Evam, and others.

The possession of a private printing press is, no doubt, a very appalling type of bibliomania. Much as has been told us of the awful scale in which drunkards consume their favoured poison, one is not accustomed to hear of their setting up private stills for their own individual consumption. There is a Sardanapalitan excess in this bibliographical luxuriousness which refuses to partake with other vulgar mortals in the issues of the public press, but must itself minister to its own tastes and demands. The owner of such an establishment is subject to no extraneous caprices about breadth of margins, size of type, quarto or folio, leaded or unleaded lines; he dictates his own terms; he is master of the situation, as the French say; and is the true autocrat of literature. There have been several renowned private presses: Walpole's, at Strawberry Hill; Mr Johnes's, at Hafod; Allan's, at the Grange; and the Lee Priory. None of these, however, went so distinctly into the groove afterwards followed by the Book Clubs as Sir Alexander Boswell's Auchinleck Press. In the Biblio

graphical Decameron, when the author quotes from others instead of speaking for himself, there are occasional interesting passages, and among these is a brief history by Sir Alexander himself, of the rise and progress of his press. He states how he had resolved to print Knoxe's Disputation: "For this purpose I was constrained to purchase two small fonts of black letter, and to have punches cut for eighteen or twenty double letters and contractions. I was thus enlisted and articled into the service, and being infected with the type fever, the fits have periodically returned. In the year 1815, having viewed a portable press invented by Mr John Ruthven, an ingenious printer in Edinburgh, I purchased one, and commenced compositor. At this period, my brother having it in contemplation to present Bamfield to the Roxburghe Club, and not aware of the poverty and insignificance of my establishment, expressed a wish that his tract should issue from the Auchinleck Press. I determined to gratify him, and the portable press being too small for general purposes, I exchanged it for one of Mr Ruthven's full-sized ones; and having increased my stock to eight small fonts, roman and italic, with the necessary appurtenances, I placed the whole in a cottage, built originally for another purpose, very pleasantly situated on the bank of a rivulet; and, although concealed from view by the surrounding wood, not a quarter of a mile from my house." Bibliographical Decameron, ii. 454.

To show the kind of man who co-operated with Scott in such frivolities, let us say a word or two more about Sir Alexander. He was the son, observe, of Johnson's Jamie Boswell, but he was about as like his father as an eagle might be to a peacock. To use a common colloquial phrase, he was a man of genius, if ever there was one. Had he been a poorer and socially humbler man than he was-had he had his bread and his position to make he would pro

bably have achieved immortality. Some of his songs are as familiar to the world as those of Burns, though their author is forgotten— as, for instance, the song of parental farewell, beginning— "Good-night, and joy be wi' ye a'; Your harmless mirth has cheered my heart,"

and ending with this fine and genial touch

"The auld will speak, the young maun hear;

Be canty, but be good and leal; Your ain ills aye hae heart to bear, Anither's aye hae heart to feel; So, ere I sett I'll see you shine,

I'll see you triumph ere I fa', My parting breath shall boast you mine. Good-night, and joy be wi' you a'."

This

His "Auld Gudeman, yer a drucken carle," "Jenny's Bawbee," and Jenny dang the Weaver," are of another kind, and perhaps fuller of the peculiar spirit of the man. consisted in hitting off the deeper and typical characteristics of Scottish life with an easy touch that brings it all home at once. His lines do not seem as if they were composed by an effort of talent, but as if they were the spontaneous expressions of nature.

Take the following specimen of ludicrous pomposity, which must suffer a little by being quoted from memory; it describes a Highland procession

"Come the Grants o' Tullochgorum
Wi' their pipers a' afore 'em ;
Proud the mithers are that bore 'em,
Fee fuddle, fau fum.

Come the Grants o' Rothiemurcus,
Ilka ane his sword and durk has,
Ilka ane as proud's a Turk is,

Fee fuddle, fau fum."

To comprehend the spirit of this, one must endow himself with the feelings of a lowland Scot before Waverley and Rob Roy imparted a glow of romantic interest to the Highlanders. The pompous and the ludicrous were surely never more happily interwoven. We would require to go further back still to appreciate the spirit of "Skeldon Haughs, or the Sow is Flitted." is a picture of old Border feudal

It

rivalry and hatred. The Laird of Bargainy resolved to humiliate his neighbour and enemy the Laird of Kerse, by a forcible occupation of part of his territory. For the purpose of making this aggression flagrantly insulting, it was done by tethering or staking a sow or female pig on the lands of Kerse. The animal was, of course, attended by a sufficient body of armed men for her protection. It was necessary for his honour that Kerse should drive the animal and her attendants away, and hence came a bloody battle about the flitting of the sow. In the contest, Kerse's eldest son and hope, Jock, is killed, and the point or moral of the narrative is the contempt with which the old laird looks on that event, as compared with the grave affair of flitting the Sow. A retainer who comes to tell him the result of the battle stammers in his narrative on account of his grief for Jock, and is thus pulled up by the laird

"Is the sow flitted?' cries the carle,
'Gie me my answer, short and plain-
Is the sow flitted, yammerin wean?'

To which the answer is,

'The Sow, deil tak her, 's ower the water, And at their back the Crawfords clatter;

The Carrick couts are cowed and bitted.'

Hereupon the laird's exultation breaks forth,

'My thumb for Jock-the sow's flitted.'"

Another man of genius and learning, whose name is a household one among the book clubs, is that of Robert Surtees, the historian of Durham. You may hunt for it in vain among the biographical dictionaries. Let us hope that this deficiency will be well supplied in the Biographia Britannica, projected by Mr Murray. He was not certainly among those who flare their qualities before the world-he was in a peculiar sense addicted, as we shall shortly notice, to hiding his light under a bushel; and so any little notice of him in actual flesh and blood, such as this left by

his friend, the Rev. James Tate, master of Richmond School, interests one

"One evening I was sitting alone it was about nine o'clock in the middle of summer-there came a gentle tap at the door. I opened the door myself, and a gentleman said with great modesty, Mr Tate, I am Mr Surtees of Mainsforth. James Raine begged I would call upon you.' 'The master of Richmond School is delighted to see you,' said I; 'pray walk in.' 'No, thank you, sir; I have ordered a bit of supper; perhaps you will walk up with me?''To be sure I will,' and away we went. As we went along, I quoted a line from the Odyssey. What was my astonishment to hear from Mr Surtees, not the next only, but line after line of the passage had touched upon. Said I to myself, 'Good master Tate, take heed; it is not often you catch such a fellow as this at Richmond.' I never spent such an evening in my life." What a pity, then, that he did not give us more of the evening, which seems to have left joyful memories to both; for Surtees himself thus commemorated it in Macaronics, in which he was an adept—

"Doctus Tatius hic residet
Ad coronam prandet ridet
Spargit sales cum cachinno.
Lepido ere et concinno.
Ubique carus inter bonos
Rubei montis præsens honos."

I

In the same majestic folio in which we found this anecdote-the Memoir prefixed to the History of Durham-we are likewise told how, when at college, he was waiting on a Don on business; and, feeling coldish, stirred the fire. Pray, Mr Surtees," said the great man, "do you think that any other undergraduate in the college would have taken that liberty?" "Yes, Mr Dean," was the reply" any one as cool as I am!" This would have been not unworthy of Brummell. The next is not in Brummell's line. Arguing with a neighbour about his not going to church, the man said, Why, sir, the parson and I have

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quarrelled about the tithes." "You fool," was the reply, "is that any reason why you should go to hell?" Yet another. A poor man, with a numerous family, lost his only cow. Surtees was collecting a subscription to replace the loss, and called on the Bishop of Lichfield, who was Dean of Durham, and owner of the great tithes in the parish, to ascertain what he would give. Give!" said the bishop, "why, a cow to be sure. Go, Mr Surtees, to my steward, and tell him to give you as much money as will buy the best cow you can find.” Surtees, astonished at this unexpected generosity, said-" My Lord, I hope you will ride to heaven upon the back of that cow." A while afterwards he was saluted in the college by the late Lord Barrington, with -"Surtees, what is the absurd speech that I hear you have been making to the dean?" "I see nothing absurd in it," was the reply; "when the dean rides to heaven on the back of that cow, many of your prebendaries will be glad to lay hold of her tail."

We have noted these innocent trifles concerning one who is chiefly known as a deep and dry investigator, for the purpose of propitiating the reader in his favour, since the sacred cause of truth requires us to refer to another affair in which his conduct, however trifling it might be, was not innocent. He was addicted to literary practical jokes of an audacious kind, and once at least carried his presumption so far as to impose on Sir Walter Scott a spurious ballad which has a place in the Border Minstrelsy. Nor is it by any means a servile imitation, which might pass unnoticed in a crowd of genuine and better ballads; but it is one of the most spirited and one of the most thoroughly endowed with individual character in the whole collection. This guilty composition is known as "The Death of Featherstonhaugh," and begins thus:

"Hoot awa', lads, hoot awa';

their jaw.

Some got a hurt, and some got nane,
Some had harness, and some got slaen."

This imposture, professing to come from the relation of a woman eighty years old, was accompanied with some explanatory notes, characteristic of the dry antiquary, thus:"Hard-riding Dick is not an epithet referring to horsemanship, but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding, the seat of another family of that name, which, in the time of Charles I., was sold on account of expenses incurred by the loyalty of the proprietor, the immediate ancestor of Sir Mathew Ridley. Will o' the Wa' seems to be William Ridley of Walltown, so called from its situation on the great Roman wall. Thirlwall Castle, whence the clan of Thirlwalls derived their name, is situated on the small river of Tippell, near the western boundary of Northumberland. It is near the wall, and takes its name from the rampart having been thirled that is, pierced or breached in its vicinity."

In the life of Surtees, the evidence of the crime is thus dryly set forth, as following up a statement of the transmission of the manuscript, and of its publication :-"Yet all this was a mere figment of Surtees' imagination, originating probably in some whim of ascertaining how far he could identify himself with the stirring times, scenes,

walls, and a'

fancy delighted to dwell on.